


An old-fashioned man

by framboise



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Politics, Deal with a Devil, F/M, Morally Ambiguous Character, Older Man/Younger Woman, Revenge, Seduction, Sugar Daddy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 21:14:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20803085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/pseuds/framboise
Summary: He had an old-fashioned style. Neat three-piece suits with rich linings, silken handkerchiefs in his pocket, real Italian leather shoes, a cashmere scarf that he tucked inside the neck of his long tailored coat, the same coat that he draped across Sansa's shoulders when he found her shivering on the balcony at that first party, smarting from an encounter with Joffrey.The same coat that he draped across Sansa's shoulders months later when he ushered her, bloodied and pale with shock, from the police precinct and into the dark warmth of his chauffeured car after the attack on the Stark mansion, the murder of Senator Ned Stark.





	An old-fashioned man

**Author's Note:**

> Thought I was done with writing fic for this fandom but apparently not! Hopefully I'm not too rusty...
> 
> Ages: Sansa (20), Petyr (45)
> 
> The epigraph is from 'Paper Love' by Allie X

_ I know you were thinking _

_bad things when you kissed me, oh  
_

* * *

"It's the right thing to do, right?" Sansa asks him, glancing at the phone before her on the table, the number already typed out, the notes that lie waiting beside it that Petyr helped her write, the words that would set off a slow-moving explosion that would destroy a political dynasty and bring her her revenge.

"Isn't it?" she asks, biting at her nails before he tugs her hand away from her mouth and kisses the back of it, his eyes glittering.

*

He had old-fashioned manners, that's what she heard an older woman say approvingly at the party when Sansa first met him, Petyr. He kissed the backs of hands, kissed papery cheeks of grande dames, opened doors, pushed buttons in elevators, held out chairs, paid the bill, and always stood between a young woman and the road.

Old-fashioned manners and old-fashioned style. Neat three-piece suits with rich linings, silken handkerchiefs in his pocket, real Italian leather shoes, a cashmere scarf that he tucked inside the neck of his long tailored coat, the same coat that he draped across Sansa's shoulders when he found her shivering on the balcony at that first party, smarting from an encounter with Joffrey.

The same coat that he draped across Sansa's shoulders months later when he ushered her, bloodied and pale with shock, from the police precinct and into the dark warmth of his chauffeured car after the attack on the Stark mansion, the murder of Senator Ned Stark.

Old-fashioned manners and old-fashioned style and, sometimes, old-fashioned morals.

"I'm a one-woman man," he told her later. Later, when she had been sleeping, only sleeping, in his apartment for a month, sheltering from the storm outside, the press and the public and the remaining members of her family who wanted to use her for their own ends.

She had asked him one evening, curious for a reason she did not want to admit, why he was never seen with a girlfriend, why he didn't go on dates.

"Have you been looking me up on the gossip pages?" he replied, smirking as he drank his evening whiskey.

She shrugged from the couch. "I was just curious."

"You should always be curious, Sansa," he said. He said her name a lot, she had noticed, seemed to savor the sound, the shape of it in his mouth.

"So you do have someone, a girlfriend, a wife?" she asked.

He held up his hands. "Do you see a wedding ring?"

"A secret wife."

He laughed. "I'm not interested in having a wife for show, like some politicians, like, oh, say, Renly Baratheon." He raised an eyebrow.

Some people said that Petyr was _that way inclined_ too, that that was why he never had a girl on his arm, why he was so careful about his clothes.

"Well, how will you meet that one woman if you don't date?" she pressed.

He smiled again. "Are you worried about me, Sansa? Do I seem lonely to you?"

She shrugged, let her head fall back on the cushions as he watched her. She felt warm from the rich food and wine of dinner, warm from the intimacy of his company. "I just don't want to get in the way of your social life."

He clucked his tongue, leaned forward in his chair so that he could pick up her hand. "Any social life that you think I might be missing can wait, you're more important than that."

*

"It's your call," he says, here, now. His words are non-committal, his shrug casual.

Is she supposed to say no, now? Now that she's already fallen so far, now that people are starting to forget their grief and outrage at Senator Stark's death and the way the Lannisters slipped so easily into the power vacuum waiting for them?

Now that she has the bruises on her neck from Petyr's kisses, the ache between her legs from last night when he moved over her in bed, crooning that she was _good, so good_ as she writhed and panted, overcome.

Now that she has made an appearance on his arm at a dozen events, their every small action breathlessly described in gossip columns, every touch of his hand to her waist and kiss to her cheek recorded in the flash of cameras, telling the world that she was _his_?

*

"He's using you," Jon had gritted out over the phone last week.

"He's helping me–" she replied.

She was standing in front of the mirror in Petyr's lavish bathroom, smudging highlighter on the tops of her cheekbones, on her browbones. She shouldn't try to cover up her freckles, Petyr had told her earlier, shouldn't try to match those brittle society blondes with their airbrushed foundations. _Let your beauty, your youth, and maybe even those dark circles, speak for you, _he had said, pressing a kiss to her temple. _Let them look at you and remember. _

"For his own ends," Jon stressed.

"Maybe his and mine are one and the same. And besides, can you really talk? With the kind of deals you're making?"

"I'm trying to make things right, trying to rebuild the North. You've hidden yourself in the city, you don't know how things are."

"I know that you've got traitors in your midst, that you're playing with fire with the Wildlings."

"You don't have to do this, Sansa. Come home."

"I'm happy here, Jon," she replied and glanced at Petyr in the mirror as he entered the room. "I have to go now."

"Everything alright?" Petyr asked. He had a hand in the pocket of his immaculate double-breasted jacket.

"Fine."

"Did you ask him where he was, your half-brother, a month ago when you needed him?" he asked, idly touching the makeup lined up on the marble counter, its gold packaging gleaming.

"He takes his vows to the Night's Watch seriously."

Petyr scoffed softly and came behind her. She set her brush down. "I take my vows seriously too," he said.

She looked at him in the mirror, her stomach quivering at the touch of his hand on her hip over the ice-blue silk of her dress.

"Do you remember what I said when you came here? I promised I'd help you, and I have, I will."

"I know."

"I also said you would have every comfort, Sansa, do you remember?" he added, mouth tickling her neck as he spoke.

Sometimes she thought he needn't have bothered with the slow seduction, with the gifts and the small kindnesses, the careful build up of touches. All he had needed to do was to hold her, take her in his arms and kiss her neck, whisper her name.

"I do," she said, tipping her head back as he brushed her hair over her shoulder.

And then she felt the touch of something cold and bright, felt his fingers loop a necklace around her neck and fasten it at her nape.

She opened her eyes. A row of diamonds, glittering and perfect.

"Did I lie?" he asked, mouth quirking.

"Not about that," she said wryly, hand rising to touch the necklace.

He tsk'd. "So cynical, darling."

He turned her head and she welcomed his kiss on her lips stained peach-pink, the taste of mint.

*

That first night she had been catatonic. He had had to peel her out of her blood-stained clothes, to wash her hair in the bath as she crouched in her underwear. His hands had been soft, careful. He hadn't leered, only regarded her with an open kind of interest.

Later, when she was drinking the Baileys he had unearthed from somewhere with a comment that a girl her age would probably prefer that to whiskey, she had looked out at his balcony and pondered how long it would take her to hit the ground. When she glanced away he was looking at her as if he knew exactly where her thoughts had been.

"You've seen behind the curtain now," he said, crouching down next to her, stroking a damp piece of hair from her cheek. "You know that it's their world and they don't care who they hurt to get their way."

She didn't need to ask who _they_ were, she wasn't a fool, even back then before Petyr started teaching her what he knew.

"In the weeks to come, you'll learn, if you haven't already, that there is no justice to be found. That it doesn't matter what's right or wrong." He moved back to sit on the chair opposite her. "And so, now, you have choices," he said — but, looking back, she thought her one and only choice might have been picking up the phone to call him and not one of her relatives, not her uncle or brother, to pick her up from the precinct; that she had known even then what hid behind those old-fashioned manners of his, those neat suits and careful smiles— "Three choices by my count. You can choose to forget what you've learned, run away. You can choose to end things, permanently, pointlessly," he said, voice harsh now. "Or you can choose the third option."

"To stay and fight?" she had replied wearily.

"No, darling," he said, leaning forward. "To fuck them. To use what you know to take them down, to ruin all of them."

"I'm just a girl," she said, heart beating fast. A girl who still smelled of blood, her father's blood, because it had only taken one pair of hands to hold her back as she screamed and struggled weakly, because she, like her father, had trusted the wrong people.

"There's steel inside you, Sansa, I know there is, I know right now you want to give up—"

She shook her head. "I want them to pay," she said, breath tight, eyes burning. She would start sobbing any minute, she knew she would but for now rage was a still point in the maelstrom.

He moved closer again, cupping her face in his hands. "You want revenge," he declared. "And I can help you get it. Do you want that, Sansa?"

She nodded. Nodded, instead of asking why he wanted to help her. Perhaps because she already knew.

"Good," he said, kissing her on the forehead.

He helped her to his bed, alone, and tucked the blankets around her. "Rest now, Sansa," he said and turned off the light. "I'm down the hall if you need me. I sleep light."

She had rested. She had rested for weeks, holed up in his apartment while he provided her with the finest versions of everything she needed - clothes, food, a phone, a computer.

He hadn't mentioned revenge again, instead he had conducted his business openly, taken calls where she could hear them, written notes as she sat next to him at the dining table playing with her food, left his tablet and laptop, his paperwork, lying around when he went off to meetings and his offices, and tuned the television to the news channels.

By the time she was ready, by the time of her father's memorial, she needed little catching-up.

"You'll go alone to this one," he had said as he handed her the clothes he had picked out for her. A black dress that made her look several years younger, a coat that swamped her thin form. "But I'll be there in the crowd if you need me. Just nod at me or you can always send me a text, but I'll be watching you, I promise."

Dressed, she stared into the hall mirror, his hands on her shoulders behind her. "We want you to look alone, vulnerable. Lure them in with those sad eyes of yours, see what you can catch."

"I could just stab her now, Cersei," she said bitterly. "Have her bleed out in front of everyone."

"Cersei is only one fish," he said, squeezing her shoulders. "We want the whole shoal."

"Fine," she said, wobbling on the thin heels of her shoes. "But you better have the Baileys waiting for me when I get home," she added, letting petulance momentarily cover up her fear, her grief. _Home_ had been a slip of the tongue though.

"I'm not sure I should let you slip into alcoholism, darling, not at your age. Won't a chocolate cake and some diamonds do?"

"I don't need diamonds, Petyr," she said. She had learned by now that he liked it when she said his name.

"No one _needs_ them, but they're nice presents to get."

"I'll keep that in mind for your next birthday," she replied and he laughed delightedly and chucked her under the chin.

"You'll do fine," he said again and she noticed that she was shivering. "Just think of the cake."

Cake and diamonds, and revenge, she thought hysterically.

In the end, it wasn't food or jewels that she was in the mood for when she returned to his apartment, her car having taken her on a long looping route through the city to throw off tails.

"Help me," she said as he opened the door. "Help me take this off," she had demanded, breath hitching as she threw her coat down. "Please, Petyr," she had asked, begged, clutching at his jacket.

"Alright, darling, you're alright," he had replied, brushing her hair back from her face.

"I hate them," she said, voice breaking.

"I know," he said and she brought his hand to the belt of her dress.

"Help me," she said and he unbuckled it, staring at her, his eyes dark and hot.

He pulled her closer then as his hands went around her to her zip, said her name against her jaw and mouthed at her neck.

She gasped, shivering as he tugged the dress over her head but she didn't have time to feel cold before he pressed her against the wall, kissing her and touching her, hands roaming over her.

"Please," she said again.

Why had she waited so long for this? she thought as he muffled her cries with a kiss, as he hoisted her up and staggered to his bedroom. Why had she not given in at the beginning?

"You don't need to beg me, Sansa, not for this," he said, voice gravelly, as he crawled up over her in his suit, as he took off her bra and sucked at one of her nipples while he pinched the other, making her squirm.

He grunted when he had her bare, when he cupped her between her legs and found her wet for him. "God, just look at you," he said.

He had his jacket off now, had rolled up his sleeves, his cufflinks gone flying. The press of his shirt, his belt buckle and trousers against her skin only seemed to make her hotter. "Like that," he said, clutching her tightly as her hips began to rock against his hand, his fingers inside of her, "good girl."

She whimpered when she came, when his hands smoothed along her trembling limbs. And when he set his mouth to her cunt she dug her heels into the bed and wailed.

*

"You're sure it will work the way we planned?" she asks, clearing her throat, thumb hovering over the call button.

"There's unknowns, there always is. But our plans can be adjusted." His hands flex on her waist. "We have failsafes, and there's always the nuclear option."

"No. I want to do this properly, slowly, I want them to hurt. To know it was me."

"Good," he says, pressing a kiss to her neck. "Now make the call."

She lifts the phone to her ear and waits for the man at the other end to answer, for the dominoes to start tumbling.

***

Her husband has old-fashioned manners. He likes to give her jewels and dresses, to open car doors for her and pay dinner bills. He likes to make her come at least twice before he does. He likes to greet foreign dignitaries with a kiss to the cheek or a firm shake of the hand, to send flowers to grieving widows with a handwritten note that he is sorry for their loss.

Her husband has old-fashioned style. He attends funerals in a long black overcoat. He wears neat three-piece suits tailored to hide wallets and phones and a slim knife that came in handy once, when his men and their guns were late. He frequents the same tailor he always has, the one who trained on Savile Row, the one whose establishment, and its useful backroom, he owns. He likes to see her in stockings.

Her husband has old-fashioned morals.

"People make too many compromises these days, not as a means to an end, but because they believe in them," he tells her one night as he strokes a hand down her bare back, the other swirling ice around a crystal glass of whiskey.

She turns on her back to look at him, stretches under his hot gaze.

"They forgive their enemies, the people that have wronged them. They sign their own death warrants. They've forgotten," he says, voice dipping as he kisses her, thumb touching the ring on her fourth finger, "the purity of revenge as motivation."

**Author's Note:**

> please comment if you enjoyed this, I'd love to know what you think! :)
> 
> I have no plans to continue this fic so feel free to imagine what form their revenge might take for yourselves, lol.
> 
> my tumblr: [framboise-fics](http://framboise-fics.tumblr.com)
> 
> and there's a rebloggable photocollage [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/188005500182/an-old-fashioned-man-by-framboise-3k-tags)


End file.
